[dragonwriter]

Yes, it's a good thing the US in general, it's government more specifically, and it's defense establishment particularly are completely free of cronyism, and there aren't huge numbers of people influential in every field even loosely associated with the US’s vast military-industrial complex that have gotten their by networking rather than any other form of merit.

[jack_riminton]

Do you have any concrete points or just snark?

[Loughla]

This is the only report I know about, but I'm 100% certain there are many more just a google search away:

https://fas.org/man/eprint/contract-fraud.pdf

Highlights: from 2013-2017, there were 1,059 criminal convictions of defense contracting fraud (1087 defendants total), including 678 individuals and 409 separate businesses. Further, there were 443 fraud-related civil cases.

These are just the ones who got caught. It's not that much of a stretch to think that this much money is going to be super tempting to well-connected cronies of our representatives.

[jack_riminton]

What does this have to do with DAPRA? I tried searching the document but couldn't find any references

[Loughla]

The grandparent made a snarky comment about defense spending in general. Which is what that document is about.

>it's a good thing the US in general, it's government more specifically, and it's defense establishment particularly

That's what they said.

[dragonwriter]

Kind of an odd response, given that the preceding post was at the same level of generality.

[jack_riminton]

No I mentioned something very specific i.e. DARPAs challenges